A Detroit area mother was thrown in jail for refusing to vaccinate her nine-year-old son.

Rebecca Bredow and her ex-husband Jason Horne, the boy’s father, had originally agreed to space out the child’s immunizations in a divorce agreement instead of sticking to the traditional schedule, but after researching the issue further, she decided it was unsafe for him to receive the shots. Although she is the boy’s primary caregiver, Horne decided that he wanted the boy to be vaccinated and asked the court to intervene.

Bredow followed all of Michigan’s laws about vaccine waivers, but in an October 4 hearing, she was sentenced to seven days in jail for contempt of court after refusing to comply with a series of court orders dating back to last November stating that she would get her son vaccinated. She was released on Monday after serving five days of the sentence.

Her ex-husband was awarded temporary custody to bring the child in for his vaccines while his mother went to prison.

Bredow told the judge that she took full responsibility for her actions and that it was never her intention to disrespect the judge or disobey court orders. She said that she’s a passionate mother who cares about her children’s health and well-being deeply and that vaccinating her son goes against her beliefs.

“I am an educated vaccine-choice mother and I have signed vaccine waivers and have been fully compliant with all state laws for both of my children for every school year,” she said. However, the judge appeared very unsympathetic, prompting Bredow’s family members to suspect she handed down the sentence to make a point.

In a recording of the hearing, Judge Karen McDonald comes across as somewhat of a medical tyrannist, saying: “I want to make it perfectly clear: We’re leaving here today. Dad’s picking the child up and he’s going to be vaccinated regardless of what Mom did or didn’t do.”

Apparently, the mother’s wishes don’t count in the judge’s view, but then again, she’s not the one who will have to deal with the repercussions of these vaccines if something goes wrong. As Joel Dorfman of the group Michigan for Vaccine Choice points out: “If this child is injured because of being given eight immunizations, who do you think is going to take care of the child? The judge?”

Dangers of multiple vaccines

The boy’s father must follow a court order to bring him up-to-date on up to eight vaccines “as rapidly as medically necessary.” This is precisely what Bredow had been hoping to avoid in the first place, and it’s understandable to many that she was willing to take such a hard line on the issue.

Getting multiple vaccines at once is particularly risky. The government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) shows that as many as 145,000 children have died in the past two decades after getting multiple vaccine doses. Researchers found that the more vaccines a child is given during a single visit to the doctor’s, the more likely they are to experience a severe reaction or die. Gaia Health reports that each additional vaccine raises a child’s chance of death by 50 percent.

Bredow said, “I would rather sit behind bars standing up for what I believe in than giving in to something I strongly don’t believe in.” She now has a criminal record, even though she followed Michigan’s rules, which do allow parents to opt out of getting certain vaccines for non-medical reasons by signing waivers and attending educational classes.

In the meantime, her son now has to deal with the knowledge that his mother was sent to prison for him while his body deals with the sudden influx of chemicals from the vaccines, on top of all the stress that the legal maneuvering likely put him through. As is often the case in these situations, it’s the child who loses most of all.